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"The recordings are a kind of classical pop," said a Vatican spokesman. "The pope wrote a great deal of poetry – much of it based on the Bible, but also about love and day to day life.

"He wrote the poems in Polish but they were translated into many languages around the world.

"The royalties will go to the Vatican because the Vatican Library is the owner of all the pope's writings." The Vatican Press published two collections of the Polish pontiff's poetry before his death three years ago at the age of 84: Meditations, or Roman Triptych, and The Poetry of John Paul II, both released in 2003.

An earlier collection, The Place Within, was published by Random House in 1994.

In one of the poems, John Paul imagines the scene after his death in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel, during the announcement of his successor.

He completed his first collection of poems at the age of 20, when he was plain Karol Jozef Wojtyla.